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You Call That a Filibuster? Texas Still Claims Record

Bill Meier, a state judge, in his Fort Worth office. As a state senator in 1977, right, Mr. Meier spoke nonstop for 43 hours — still the longest filibuster in a state legislature or Congress.Credit
Ben Torres for The New York Times

FORT WORTH, Tex. — State Senator Wendy Davis’s exhausting filibuster of at least 11 hours at the Texas Capitol last week turned her into a national political star. Bill Meier’s filibuster in the same building — on the same floor, at the same desk — 36 years earlier left him with a stiff back, rubbery legs, a ragged voice and a footnote-size place in history, though few people outside Texas remember.

On May 2, 1977, Mr. Meier rose to speak on the floor of the Senate chamber in Austin at 3:20 p.m. He did not relinquish the floor and sit down until 10:20 a.m. on May 4, some 43 hours later. It remains the longest filibuster by an American politician in a state legislature or in Congress. Then a 36-year-old Democratic state senator, Mr. Meier stood and talked nearly continuously for about as long as it would take to drive from Manhattan to San Francisco without stopping.

He read verbatim from more than 200 legal cases from dozens of law books lined up on the floor. He sucked on hard candy, ate a few lemon slices and sipped water. And he wore an “astronaut bag” attached to his leg under his pants — like a hot water bottle — so he could answer nature’s call without interruption.

The state’s two most famous filibusters are strangely intertwined. Ms. Davis is a Democrat who represents a portion of Fort Worth in Tarrant County, as was Mr. Meier at the time. She wore salmon-colored running sneakers, he dark-blue corduroy house slippers (and a plaid coat his wife hated). The desk they shared is in the same spot on the Senate floor as it was in 1977.

Ms. Davis helped prevent Republicans from passing some of the toughest abortion restrictions in the country as a midnight deadline approached. Mr. Meier, who had helped write the state’s Open Records Act, opposed a bill that would have made workers’ compensation claims from industrial accidents private information, rather than public.

The bill passed the Senate shortly after Mr. Meier’s filibuster ended, and it was eventually signed into law by Gov. Dolph Briscoe. But Mr. Meier said his goal was not to kill the bill but to bring public attention to it, just as Ms. Davis’s filibuster may not ultimately block the Republican-controlled Legislature from passing the abortion bill, but has already succeeded in galvanizing Democrats.

After Ms. Davis’s filibuster, Gov. Rick Perry called lawmakers back in a special legislative session this week to try to get the bill passed. Early Wednesday, the Republican majority in a House committee voted to send the bill to the full House.

As Mr. Meier flipped through a scrapbook of newspaper clippings from 1977, he said the filibuster had been in use since around 50 B.C., when Cato the Younger filibustered the Roman Senate. “Yes, I was tired, and, yes, I was hungry, and what I wanted to do was to go take a hot bath and eat a big steak and go to sleep, and that’s what I did,” said Mr. Meier, now a Republican.

He was physically prepared — he jogged and credited his stamina to working at a glass factory in his hometown, Waco — but he said the filibuster was more a mental endurance test. Straying off topic could violate Senate rules, and three violations would effectively end his filibuster. He received no violations.

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“I admire his iron will,” said State Senator Wendy Davis.Credit
Ben Torres for The New York Times

“I admire his iron will,” Ms. Davis said in a statement. “Although I would never hesitate to stand up for Texas families on matters that impact their lives, I hope neither I, nor anyone else, has to beat his record anytime soon.”

Other Texas senators have conducted filibusters that lasted more than 30 hours over the decades, receiving assistance from colleagues who asked wordy questions to give the filibustering lawmaker a break.

“I don’t think you can get elected in Texas without knowing how to talk and be outspoken,” said A. R. Schwartz, 86, a former Democratic state senator known as Babe and a filibustering expert. “I haven’t seen any mild-mannered folks get elected to the Texas Senate.”

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There was at least one other person in 1977 as relieved as Mr. Meier was when his filibuster ended — the sponsor of the bill, Senator Ray Farabee, a Democrat. Rules required that a bill under consideration have its sponsor or co-sponsor present to answer questions — at all times.

“Here it would be 3 in the morning,” Mr. Meier said. “I’m droning on and on, and Farabee is sitting over at his desk. I’d watch him and, just as he was just about to get to sleep, I’d get over right close to the desk and say something very loud.”

“If you don’t have fun with this stuff, it really gets tough.”

A version of this article appears in print on July 4, 2013, on Page A15 of the New York edition with the headline: You Call That a Filibuster? Texas Still Claims Record. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe